Now Oliver tries its hand at programmatic media

In-house agency group Oliver Group is trying its hand at programmatic media buying, forming Oliver Media led by Duncan Trigg.

Trigg has founded and worked for a number of online ad companies, latterly as VP of advertising at ComScore.

Oliver instals teams in client offices, managed by a number of national and regional hubs. Media is the logical next step.

Oliver founder Simon Martin (left) says: “One of the founding principles of Oliver is transparency, coupled with an ambition to help our clients do things better and faster – liberating the new within their businesses.

“Embedding a media buying function into our model adds a vital component for clients – it means they can take charge of the last step in delivering campaigns, and they can do that in real time with specialists that sit right next to them.

“Duncan lives and breathes media and programmatic, and he shares our vision of putting the power back into the hands of advertisers to understand what works, where their campaigns run and whether they’re actually seen.”

Oliver has undoubtedly changed the industry. Its latest venture is a studio at Unilever and it has also bought a number of companies including digital agency Dare. But some more established agencies have belatedly woken up to the combined threat/opportunity.

The&Partnership’s new deal to handle Toyota Europe is based on &Toyota teams in the car maker’s various offices. T&P’s CHI has installed in-house agency Pulse at News UK and runs a similar operation for TalkTalk.

Oliver undoubtedly has first mover advantage in this new market but its success will depend on attracting the best talent as the big agency groups roll out their own in-office offers.